phantom pain
by crankyhermit
Summary: It isn't a fantasy if he's not sure he wants it. Tsuzuki thinks about Muraki and Hisoka.


Yuletide story for Shaded Mazoku

Spoilers for manga up to and including Volume 11.

* * *

****

phantom pain

Muraki is dead. As he deserves, for everything he has done; as he should be, for all that Tsuzuki invested in the killing blow; and finally. Just that. Finally.

Except Tsuzuki had fully intended to kill both Muraki and himself with that summons, hadn't he? And if he'd survived, what of Muraki? His memories of that time are detached and out-of-focus, like impressions gleaned from someone else's recounting, but he hasn't asked to check the records, not wanting to know, or to expose his doubts. It's not like anyone else is losing sleep over the possibility. That he knows of.

If anyone should wonder, and let the notion keep him up nights, it is Hisoka, who has just cause and reason to want Muraki dead beyond all question or doubt. But Hisoka *knows* Muraki in every sense of the word, and he doesn't believe in wasting his energies on amorphous terrors. He doesn't dream.

Not most of the time anyway. Hisoka is happy to seem forgetful of Muraki's very existence, and he sleeps the peaceful sleep of the innocent he is. As long as Muraki is not in his face, threatening him and Tsuzuki - who for some reason Hisoka has seen fit to take into his heart however unworthy Tsuzuki feels - he doesn't let past traumas or dread of the future bother him. Tsuzuki envies that strange truce Hisoka has made with his personal demons, but he doesn't dare begrudge Hisoka his rest.

He's seen Hisoka dreaming before. 

Hisoka doesn't scream. He writhes in the tangled sheets, his slim fingers clutching at the material as though he would burrow into the bed, whimpers like a trapped animal. Terrified mewls escaping between pants and pleas for the pale stranger to stop touching him, somebody to save him, anyone, please, Tsuzuki, help, please.

He should have woken Hisoka long before that point, but he was saving Hisoka's tender pride from the awkwardness of knowing he had a witness to his nightmare, and how much he had revealed of what had taken place then. He had hoped Hisoka would wake of his own accord.

He *hadn't* wondered about what Muraki had done to the boy, or how Hisoka had looked, panting in the moonlight as Muraki held him down and traced arcane designs into his trembling flesh. The arch of a pale neck as Hisoka threw back his head in pain. No. He would have taken Hisoka's place beneath the cherry trees if he could, and spared him the years of suffering, his long-protracted death, and the nightmares wherein he relived the violation over and over again. Shut up. He would have. He deserved it where Hisoka had not, and surely it's not wrong to wonder... it... it isn't a fantasy, is it, if he's not sure if he does want it? It isn't. He doesn't fantasize about his friend and partner's worst trauma in a short and cruel life.

But Muraki is dead, and Hisoka will not dream of him again. Tsuzuki isn't sure how he feels about that. He knows how he should feel, and he knows what he thinks. It is a good thing, that Muraki has received his dues and is no longer a threat. But nobody asked his opinion. They are all content to forget Muraki the way Hisoka does.

He's used to it. He should have expected it - that his friends would not notice there was anything amiss, that he wasn't reacting to Muraki's death quite the way he should have, except maybe they did, and accepted it as part of his nature the way they accepted everything about him, unconditionally and unquestioningly, content to let him hug his darkness to himself, as long as he remembers they are there for him if he should need them. He doesn't deserve them, their simple faith in him. God knows he doesn't.

What can Hisoka be thinking? Hisoka has been in the darkest recesses of his psyche, once synchronized so intimately with him in mind and body that he had been able to use Tsuzuki's powers as though they were his own. They had to be insane. He is ashamed to think it, but they might yet come to their senses and abandon him as they should. 

He remembered very well the first time he'd touched Hisoka without the fog of alcohol over the boy's empathic senses. Hisoka had screamed, striking out at him instinctively, and practically curled into himself from the shock. Thereafter he'd been careful to keep his guard up, as had Hisoka, but what had Hisoka seen then? Or dared he soothe himself with the idea that what Hisoka had reacted to was some residual taint from his first meeting with Muraki and not something in Tsuzuki himself? It's not like he can tell, nor would Hisoka. Hisoka has grown into his powers, so much that even the Earl, surrounded by what Hisoka calls a miasma of lusts, doesn't bother him as long as he has his shields up.

Perhaps Tsuzuki's madness is contagious, or Hisoka has become accustomed to it. Or why else would he be sitting here, tolerating or ignoring Tsuzuki and his circuitous thoughts about Muraki, about the pale, graceful hands, certain and suggesting the threat or promise they never fulfilled, wondering how they would feel on his body...

Wondering what would have happened had Hisoka had lost a certain game of cards where he had been the prize only one of the players seemed to have wanted...

Wondering how things might have turned out if only Muraki had wanted him for a different purpose when he kidnapped him and taken him away from his duties...

Wondering about the meaning behind Hisoka's quiet regard, if he understands Tsuzuki's confusion and loves him in despite, or knows and somehow sympathizes with this strange, unwarranted sense of loss...

But that would be ascribing his own perversions to Hisoka.

Or perhaps it is knowing pity, because Muraki is dead and Tsuzuki will never know; he can never do any harm by his fantasies.

Whatever it is, they find it does not need to be spoken - this feeling of loss over something he never had and shouldn't want - and the silence continues.

* * *


End file.
